There I was, aboard the ferociously barbaric 2015 Dodge Challenger Hellcat, ready to restrain all 707 horsepowers and execute a stellar lap time on our autocross course. By the first turn, however, I'd given up.

This car doesn't want to go straight. It doesn't do polite, or graceful. It does sideways. All of the time. Dropping grandma off at the hair salon? Sideways. Driving home after a painful vasectomy? Sideways. Carrying a trunk-full of explosives to an off-the-grid location somewhere in the deserts of Arizona? Sideways.

Achieving a clean lap is pointless; this car just isn't meant for that. The Challenger Hellcat is a proper unadulterated muscle car, something that doesn't exist elsewhere -- even in Mustang GT500 or Camaro ZL1 trim. Today's ponies are tamed and refined for modern use, whereas the Hellcat sticks its middle finger up at society. It's basically Keith Moon with a license plate, only conceived from the depths of Detroit.

The moment you touch the throttle (even in third gear), the tires spin. It roars like James Earl Jones nursing a hangover. To say the Hellcat is fast would be a gross understatement. Sixty miles-per-hour arrives easily within four seconds; completing the quarter mile on stock tires takes just 11.2 seconds. A 6.2-liter HEMI V-8 resides under the scooped hood, massaged into the beast that it is via a Titanic-sized supercharger. Even by Dodge's own admission, building a machine like this makes little sense from a business perspective. But creating something special seldom does.

After just a couple of laps on the autocross we had to swap the rear tires with the fronts. Two laps later, all four were down to the cords. Of all the cars I've driven sideways, none are as easy to control as the Challenger -- and none do skids as extensive outside of a purpose built drift-car. For that we must thank the immense torque on tap and rear tires that simply aren't nearly large enough to cope with an extreme engine like the Hellcat's.

That engine. It's simply an expensive tool to destroy rubber, and a more efficient way of emptying your bank account than, say, sending your wife to Saks Fifth Avenue for an afternoon with six of her best friends and a bucket-full of margarita.

But you don't care. For $60,000, the Hellcat is a riot. I'd re-mortgage my house to own one, but first, I may need to befriend Mr. Pirelli. And buy my wife a bucket-full of margarita.